Bagatelle

Bagatelle (from the Château de Bagatelle) is a billiards-derived indoor table game, the object of which is to get a number of balls (set at nine in the 19th century) past wooden pins (which act as obstacles) into holes that are guarded by wooden pegs; penalties are incurred if the pegs are knocked over.

A bagatelle variant using fixed metal pins, billard japonais, eventually led to the development of pachinko and pinball.

They are attested in general by the 15th century, although the 19th-century idea that bagatelle itself derived from the English "shovel-board" described in Charles Cotton's 1674 Compleat Gamester[2] has since been disregarded.

In 1777, a party was thrown in honour of Louis XVI and the queen at the Château de Bagatelle, recently erected at great expense by the king's brother, the Count of Artois.

[1] Some French soldiers carried their favorite bagatelle tables with them to America while helping to fight the British in the American Revolutionary War.